Review: Lavondyss - Robert Holdstock ****

By Brian Clegg

This book is, in effect, a sequel to Holdstock’s astonishing fantasy novel Mythago Wood (though the author considered it not a sequel, but rather a story using the same setting with some overlapping characters). It’s hard to rate it, as the first half of the book is even better than its predecessor, but then there is a change of gear into part two, which for me doesn’t work as well.

Once again, the action centres on Ryhope Wood, a place where ancient woodland has mysterious ties to the past and where interaction between humans and the woodland allows echoes of myth from the far past to become solid and dangerous. The exact setting is unclear – the introduction by Lisa Tuttle says the real world setting is Holdstock’s childhood home in Kent – but Mythago Wood puts the location as Herefordshire, while in Lavondyss a local is described as having a Gloucestershire accent. This is even more confusing when Holdstock rather beautifully brings in Ralph Vaughan Williams as a secondary character, but has RVW saying he doesn’t know the area, perhaps because Holdstock didn’t realise he was born in Gloucestershire (though admittedly he moved away as a young child).

The first part introduces a girl called Tallis in the years up to her being 13: she is deeply fascinated by myth and magic. The way that Holdstock handles her interaction with the local landscape and the importance of names is beautiful. We absolute relate to Tallis’s character – but also to the concerns of her parents, who are indulgent of her imaginings but worried by what seem to be growing into an obsession. (It would have been interesting to have seen her story taken in a direction undertaken in one of the episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, where Buffy’s parents have her sectioned because of what appear to be her dangerous fantasies). We can both empathise with Tallis and sympathise with what the parents would be going through.

At the end of part one, Tallis enters Ryhope Wood, and here we get the disconnect. For the rest of the book she is an adult – we only learn of the intervening years in a few references – and becomes much more of a cipher. She is joined by a character from Mythago Wood who never directly appeared in that book, but part two is very much the same kind of quest story within the wood as the first novel, and fails to link us to the characters. They all become somewhat two-dimensional. It doesn’t help that there is a really weird section where Holdstock seems to totally forget the distinction between humans and mythagos, putting Tallis through an experience that could only happen to a mythago if Holdstock had been consistent in his world building.

Tuttle says Tallis’s story can be hard going at times – I’d say, I’m afraid that part two simply isn’t well written. But part one is so good that it’s worth having the book for that alone. Not only does it delve into the nature of myth and the sense of place that is so central to good fantasy, it also explores the twin natures of stories and storytelling – Holdstock gives one of the best reflections I’ve seen of the way that authors can experience story effectively emerging from the ether, almost out of their control.

So, do read it (after Mythago Wood). And you may have a totally different view of part two – but either way, the first half of the book is near-perfection.

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Now Appearing is the blog of science writer Brian Clegg (www.brianclegg.net), author of Inflight Science, Before the Big Bang and The God Effect.